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Hi! I am writing my EE in biology and I would really appreciate getting some advice from people who have done it in the past. What was hard for you in the process? How did you solve it? Is there anything that you think would have been helpfull to know earlier in the process? General advice and so on would be really helpfull for me both regarding the writing of the essay and the lab. Thank you

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One thing that everyone likes to say is to start early. This is true but to an extent. We started our EE process in around March, but by then I was pretty sure what I wanted to do, I finalised my topic after my first meeting with my supervisor. Then I researched regarding my topic and methods that were already there, and I started pre-trials before Easter. I finished my experiments before we left for the summer holidays, but this was because the experiment itself was pretty long as I had to leave the apparatus running overnight. Depending on your experiment, I would suggest planning and staying back at school for as long as possible to finish your experiments and collecting data. My planning and organization really helped and meant that I wasn't stressed after I came back from the holidays.

That being said, I did no work on my EE during the holidays because I was busy with uni stuff, but all in all, I would say I had my first draft done around September. I did book a lot of meetings with my supervisor regarding the wording of certain things in my report and how exactly to go about the formatting, so don't be afraid to book meetings with your supervisor! You have to be able to chase them down because usually, they won't remind you about meetings and things like that.

Make sure you're organized and on top of your work, and finish collecting data as soon as possible! Hope this helped!

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Thanks a lot for your answer! What are the kinds of questions you discussed with your supervisor? I am having trouble knowing to what extent I can ask for help when I feel confused and did you feel insecure how your topic would work out? If you did how did you try to become more secure? Thanks

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Thanks a lot for your answer! What are the kinds of questions you discussed with your supervisor? I am having trouble knowing to what extent I can ask for help when I feel confused and did you feel insecure how your topic would work out? If you did how did you try to become more secure? Thanks

Well, I was unsure of my exact topic but I had a basic idea of what topic I wanted to do - these were things I found interesting in the course. I felt more comfortable talking to my biology teacher first so I asked him what were the possible topics I could do, and from those, I narrowed down and did some research on my own, then I went to my supervisor. After proposing my ideas, my supervisor helped me narrow down to one topic, which I again went away to research on - our school had a form type of thing that had to be filled out pretty early on, so this kind of forced me to consider everything. The form had things like why I wanted to do the topic, how it was related to biology, a research question, an estimation of the graph of data, independent and dependent variables, a hypothesis, supporting research - things like that. So I was pretty secure in my topic and my supervisor assured me that my topic was okay. I guess if you're feeling unsure, I would recommend talking to your supervisor. I was open with my supervisor and honest, so whenever I had problems I would just tell him and ask him a bunch of questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions - that's what your supervisor is for! Don't feel afraid of sounding dumb or anything like that to your supervisor, everyone is bound to have trouble coming up with an idea for your topic for EE - this is pretty much the first time you have to write up your own paper. But don't go asking for help when you haven't done any work yourself: make sure you've done a bunch of research. Go on forums, look at examples of what people have done, look at the course and pick a couple of topics you're interested in. Search for experiments related to those topics - I literally just searched for "high school experiments" on Google.

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Thanks a lot this really helps! The thing is that I already have a topic is just that I am worried that it will be to complex to cover with dept in the EE and since we have a first draft deadline due soon I don't know how to go about it with my supervisor and questions. Thanks a lot for your replies!

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Thanks a lot this really helps! The thing is that I already have a topic is just that I am worried that it will be to complex to cover with dept in the EE and since we have a first draft deadline due soon I don't know how to go about it with my supervisor and questions. Thanks a lot for your replies!